


am i the one you think about, when you're sitting in your fainting chair, drinking pink rabbits?

by millcrs (remoose)



Series: kid in lonely town [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Child Neglect, Drug Use, Gen, Good Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper, Good Parent Joyce Byers, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Mental Health Issues, Post-Season/Series 02, Slut Shaming, steve & hop's lighter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23166016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remoose/pseuds/millcrs
Summary: Ms Byers hums at that, squashes the butt of her cigarette against the side of her house like it’s no big deal, and tightens the knot of his laces.He hadn’t even noticed they’d come undone.“Remember what I said about the kids being tough?”He nods, struck speechless by her thoughtless affection.“You’re pretty tough too. You take all these hard hits and then you stand back up and take another and another.”Her small hands, stiff with the cold, squeeze at his foot before she rises; barely taller than him even though he’s still sitting down.“You know you don’t have to do that, right?”
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Joyce Byers & Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Steve Harrington & Steve Harrington’s Mother, Steve Harrington/Canon Female Characters, Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler (past)
Series: kid in lonely town [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648192
Comments: 23
Kudos: 225





	am i the one you think about, when you're sitting in your fainting chair, drinking pink rabbits?

Mom flies back from the Hamptons a whole month after Billy Hargrove tries to kill him. Mom, who arrived without warning, all tinted furs and diamonds and designers that Steve had met once but couldn't care to remember. _That was a snake once_ , he thought. _That was a fox_. 

Mom likes to wear skins, to feel glamorous, to feel like someone else. She zips one on every morning, under her furs and silks. Paints it with ruby lipstick and clumpy mascara. She's heavy handed with the blush too, with the amount of wine she pours into her crystal glasses. 

Her hair is always nice, Steve thinks, if nothing else. She twists it around her fingers like she's in a movie, like she probably did in a movie once, when Steve is telling her about school and she's just waiting for him to finish talking so she can start on about so and so having an affair with the governor of New Hampshire. Like her own husband isn't here right now because he's fucking his secretary in Cape Cod. 

It's cold when Mom gets back, because it's almost Christmas. She has the heat all the way up because she's always freezing, because her bones are brittle beneath all her layers. How she hugs Steve is stiff, stilted, when she sees his face. Like his cuts and scars aren't all scabbed over so he _can’t_ stain her kimono with blood. Steve is sweating all the time, with the fire lit and the heat on and Mom putting scented candles everywhere like they don't make him sneeze. 

It's unfortunate that she's home now, or not. Depending on how you look at it. The kids are having a party or something. After everything. Henderson's been begging him to go, over and over, even gave him a walkie to harass him about it at like two in the fucking morning. But it's been a month since the junkyard and the demodogs and Billy Hargrove making Steve's brain blow up like a balloon, and he still can't look at Nancy. 

He's been throwing a big pity party up in his room, his plaid castle, playing mixtapes he made her for their one month anniversary, their two month, their _three, four, five, six_ ... yeah. New venetian blinds to shut out the turquoise glow of the pool and the phantom _click, click, click_ of Jonathan Byers' camera. The sound of Barb screeching, _like he was even there_. 

But he tells Dustin like ten times over that he can't make it to whatever they have planned, because his Mom is home and he has to stay with her. Dustin scoffs, calls it a poor excuse. Steve's never cared to stay home with his parents before, and Steve wants to say that that's because in the entire month that he and Henderson have been friends (and since summer, honestly) his parents have not set foot in Hawkins. 

He wants to say, _I don't need a pity invite because my blood stained Ms Byers floor._

He wants to say, _my mom can't be left my herself when she's like this._

He wants to say, _I’m so hungover from Laurie’s party last night, please._

He wants to say, _if I see Nancy look at Jonathan the way I always wanted her to look at me then I might cry. And you're the only one left who thinks I'm even remotely cool. You can't see that. _

What he says instead is a simple _I'll think about it_ . Which is a mistake, really. Because it gives Dustin hope. He waits for Steve to say _over_ before whooping into the walkie, rambling on to Steve about how great it's going to be, fully aware that Steve can't actually respond until he lets go of the button. 

When he makes to leave for the Byers on Sunday -- having spent an hour doing his hair up after scorching his skin under the shower’s spray and using all his mom’s lavender shower gel for some semblance of calm to dull the throbbing in his skull -- he hesitates in his room, then at the top of the stairs, then at the bottom when he hears mom singing to Billie Holiday in the kitchen. 

Dad gets all frustrated when he’s like this, when he has no follow through. But dad’s not here and mom is dancing in the kitchen to her _I’m going to throw myself into a fit of wine and pills on the chaise-longue and konk out while you panic about whether or not I’ll wake up_ music. 

Dad doesn’t get frustrated when mom is like this, he just ignores her and talks too loud on the phone about other peoples’ wives and scotch and break-even points. 

Sometimes she’ll scream and cry, and throw herself against the sliding doors in the living room like she’s substantial enough to even scratch the glass. Dad calls it _another one of her shows_.

_There’s no audience, Kitty_. 

He goes on and on about how they can’t be in New York and Miami all the time just because she likes it better. How they have a house here in piddly, little Hawkins, Indiana and peers that respect them; connections.

Not that they have a son, no. One they brought into this big world and ditched in this small town with a car too big and too loud for him and a monthly allowance wired into his bank account. 

A son who lost his virginity at 14, who broke into the liquor cabinet and took too many of his mom’s pills. Who spent too much money on his friends and their parties (even though he told Nancy yesterday that he wouldn’t go), who got a girl killed in his parents’ precious pool. _But did you clean it, Steven? This isn’t LA, pool boys don’t grow on trees_.

And his father was selective in his caring. If John Harrington had slept around or produced another kid with another woman, he always found a way to make Steve the problem. 

_You’re a source of such unnecessary stress, Steven._

_Don’t you think your mother’s got enough going on?_

_A concussion is no excuse, Steven, this GPA is mortifying._

_Are you on drugs right now? You’re disgusting_.

But even without the constant drone of his father’s criticisms, Steve can’t bring himself to breach the boundaries of his front door and make the short walk to his car to actually get to the Byers’ on time. 

Mom is singing and it’s beautiful. And sad. It’s always been like that. Steve mentioned it to her once and she let out a pitchy laugh, and put on a smile that showed all her teeth and told him that she was so _happy_. 

When Steve rights his reflection in the mirror and pulls the sleeves of his favourite blue sweater down, he looks like his mom, more than ever. 

He tells himself that’s a good thing and squeezes his toes against the thick, fuzzy carpet before entering the kitchen. But it’s bad, because he’s totally wiped out from the house party last night, from the strobe lights and hotpot of pills, from the shots off Laurie’s marble coffee table, from the shots off Laurie’s stomach. And it’s not like he doesn’t know that his mom lives a similar lifestyle; Chambord and diamond nooses don’t make it any classier. 

So maybe mom is falling apart to the songs that act as the film score to his nightmares. Maybe she’s sloshing wine and has flour on her designer blouse because she’s baking, for whatever reason. But she’s going to do what she’s going to do, regardless of Steve. 

_Anyway_ , Steve’s lack of follow through? He gets that from his mother. 

“I’m going to the Byers’ house, ma. I’ll be back later tonight.”

“Oh, but _sugar_ , my pie isn’t ready.”

She wipes her hands on the apron, flour and butter caked under her cherry red acrylics. Steve grimaces. He leans in and presses a gentle kiss to her hollow cheek.

“It’s okay, ma. We can eat it when I get back.” Then, as an afterthought: “Smells great.”

He leaves her like that. Swaying to the music and content with his response in the moment. Ties his black and white Cortez on the bottom of the stairs and makes for the Beemer with his keys in his back pocket. 

Though there is nothing but forest between his house and the Byers’, the drive takes a little longer. On his journey, Steve considers that maybe he should have brought something. Like a pie. Like the one mom is apparently making. But they’d all believe he just fucked the recipe up anyway; and Nancy’s mom always sent way too much food to these kinds of things. 

Like Mike showing up to Will’s without a casserole was _mortifying_.

Besides, he doesn’t even want to go -- Henderson is forcing him, that’s all. He’s spent the whole month trying to avoid Nancy’s attempts at conversation, and he’s succeeding so far. This is what he gets for trying to be a good babysitter. Or role model. Or whatever. 

...

When Steve arrives, music is sounding from the Byers’ windows and floating out into the powdery blue evening. 

It’s something he knows Jonathan has chosen, because Steve remembers things like that. The songs Jonathan put on a mixtape for their road trip to the lakes over spring break. Evidently not as much of a third wheel as he seemed at the time. Steve recognised none of them, with his seemingly generic music taste. Nancy knew some. He felt so stupid during that trip. 

He hangs back for a second, Nike’s crunching in the freezing dirt and mulch. A curly head peers around the curtains after a moment. He thinks it’s Dustin, who may have developed a sixth Steve sense during the growth of their friendship, but it’s not. 

Eleven crooks her finger at him. Like she’s telling him to come inside. Like he has no choice. 

If it were Dustin, he might have flipped the bird and turned right back to his Beemer, but the girl could probably flip his car in a second flat, so he’s not willing to risk the repercussions that might come with telling her no. 

His hands shake when he knocks on the front door, when Joyce Byers answers and envelopes him in a hug so warm that his heart aches to compare it to the one he received from his mother earlier. 

It makes him feel bad inside, to think that Joyce is a better mother than his own -- that if he fell into the Upside Down, his parents wouldn’t even notice, let alone fight until their last breath to save him. 

No one has ever been willing to do that much for Steve. He’s never been given the chance to unknow it. 

His hands continue to shake. When Dustin reaches to smack a poorly placed high-five against his palm. When Mike rolls his eyes at the fuss over Steve’s arrival. When Max and Lucas look at him like he might collapse before their very eyes. Like their absorbing every pinkish scar and mottled expanse of skin that they feel responsible for. 

He shoots them a smile and a wave, he feels Eleven’s gaze weigh heavily on the back of his skull, and his hands still shake. 

It’s not like he can escape to the kitchen, because he can hear Nancy there, laughing at something Jonathan has said while cooking. Because Jonathan is good like that. He’s always been good at heart and smart in a way that Nancy loves. 

Their kitchen is messy but clean, from what little he remembers of it. Steve’s kitchen is steeped in cherry pie filling and bleach. 

His mother is crying by now, he can feel it in his chest. 

Steve wants to cry too, but he won’t. The Chief is asking him a question, one of those roundabout questions that’s saying more than it initially seems to. 

“Your parents home for the holidays, kid?”

Like he’s been watching Steve’s house and heard the sad singing from the outside. Like he knows Steve is usually home alone and that his parents are a rare sight around Hawkins, Indiana. 

“Just my mom.”

The Chief nods like that’s an acceptable answer for the moment. But of course Nancy chooses that point to enter the living room, a tea towel slung over her shoulder, hair frizzed from the steam of the kitchen. From Jonathan’s hands, probably. 

Steve might look at her for a little too long. And there is a moment where he has to remind himself to breathe. Like he had to last night, when his heart and his mind and every inch of him begged for Nancy beneath him, not Laurie or Tina or _whoever_. He looks stupid, he knows that. Looks even more stupid when she pokes at a question she never seemed particularly concerned with while they were dating. 

“Oh, your mom? I didn’t know she was home.”

_I didn’t know she would bother_ , is what Steve hears. It’s what Steve feels when people act like his parents are figments of his imagination, that he created in his mind to fill the empty space of his house in Loch Nora. Still, Tommy’s mockery of that felt better than Nancy’s current, and very obvious, pity.

He wants to curl up and die in that very moment. He’d like to scream, really. Out in the woods that separates his house from the Byers. Far enough that no one would hear him. Because she looks so beautiful like this -- in this light, in her element -- never how she looked with him. Her cheeks are rosy and her nose is scrunched at something the kids are saying because Steve’s not the sole focus of her attention in this moment, in _any_ moment. He never was. 

“Yeah.”

Nancy looks struck by how removed he sounds. The tension is palpable, and Hopper clears his throat out like he has no time for this teenage _bullshit_.

Steve’s never been so grateful.

“Hear you’ve been babysitting the kids these past few weeks, huh?”

There is a suggestion in his tone, maybe a hint of surprise, like they’ve come so far from Hop crashing Steve’s pool parties and making him walk a straight line down the pavement without falling on his face. 

“Uh, yeah. Sort of.” He mumbles, before correcting his volume to something a little more respectable. “Mainly Henderson and Lucas. Sometimes Max, if her, uh, _step-brother’s_ being a dick about it.”

Steve doesn’t know when he became so sensitive to the feelings of teenagers. He really doesn’t care whether Max and Hargrove are siblings or step-siblings, but it seems preferable to separate them as far from each other in his mind as possible. Because Max is a good kid and Hargrove is, well, the _antichrist_.

And it seems that the mention of Max is what Hopper wants to hear, because he nods for Steve to follow him out onto the porch; away from Nancy’s curious gaze, away from Steve’s inability to not look at her. 

Steve shuts the door softly to the sound of the kids arguing over something, to the sound of Ms Byers calling them all to set the table.

To the sound of _Nancy, Nancy, Nancy_. Laughter light on her tongue, as she herds the party to do their duties. 

Steve gets hooked on the melody of it, eyes trailing to the living room window pane before Hopper’s knuckles against the outside wall slam him back into reality. 

“Knock, knock, kid. You in there?” He’s lighting up, Camels, Steve thinks. Confirms, when Hopper passes him one, already lit, and looks at him all heavy from under those furrowed brows. “Still got that lighter I gave you?”

“Oh, yeah. Sir. It’s in my room.” For safe-keeping. For sentiment. Steve doesn’t tell him this. 

“Wasn’t planning on coming out tonight, honestly. Didn’t think I’d need it.” Steve takes a drag and holds it, and Hopper waits. Because he’s not really asking, but he never seems to mind people telling. For as annoyed as he always seems, Steve knows the Chief soaks up information like a sponge. 

“Henderson kept nagging me over that damn walkie. Like I’m his personal chauffeur or somethin’.”

“Speaking of.” Hopper interjects, because it’s gotten to the point of the conversation that he’s most interested in. Maybe he wants Steve to stop driving the kids around. Because of how he was before. Maybe he doesn’t trust him with them, given how he used to be; given how he still is _now_.

“Woah, cool your jets, Harrington. No need to look so worried.” But he pauses, seeming to consider his next sentence, like he’s been weighing it in his mind for a while now. “Just been meaning to ask you a favour, is all. It’s about El.”

“Eleven?”

“You know any other El?” Steve shakes his head. “Well, I was hoping you’d be able to come watch her after school. In the cabin. Now that you’re, uh…”

Steve winces at this justification, can’t help that shame that flutters in his gut at not being able to play his way through a head injury. “Benched?” 

“Yeah, that.” And sure, Hopper looks apologetic, but he’s the one who warned Steve against playing in the first place. “Look, kid. You’re my first choice for it, I promise you that.” 

It’s something like validation, that sparks in the base of Steve’s gut. He’s going to say yes, obviously. It’s not like he has anything better to do, but Hopper keeps talking anyway. 

“The kid’s taken a real shine to you -- must’ve been everything the brats told her about your little adventures in the tunnels, I don’t know. It’d only be a few days a week, so she doesn’t get all restless, and I’d pay you a fair amount-- ”

In what feels like a cardinal sin, Steve cuts the Chief off mid-ramble. “No need, sir. Like you said, it’s only a few days out of the week.”

“Still, kid. You’re doing me a real big favour here.”

“Nah,” Steve waves his free hand, cigarette almost smoked to the butt in the other. “She’s a good kid. I think.”

“Damn right, she is.”

Steve’s never really thought of Hopper as, like, a proud parent. As someone who could be fond of anyone. But he’s seen the way the Chief is with Eleven, hell, he’s seen how he is with Ms Byers, and Steve just knows the guy has a soft spot somewhere deep inside. 

Steve wishes Hop would be soft for him too. 

He wishes that anyone would be. 

Later, when Hopper informs Eleven that Steve will be babysitting her after school, Mike acts like it’s the democratic debate and lists off all the reasons that is just a terrible idea as Ms Byers serves up the green beans. 

Steve burns crimson, stomach flipping in shame at the inevitable mention that _he can’t even win a fight_. Because maybe Jonathan could have protected the kids, could have kept them safe from Billy Hargrove and the tunnels and would have planted his goddamn feet. Maybe that’s why Nancy chose him; one of many reasons. 

It’s Lucas who interjects, though, biting in his tone that “What, Mike? You think you’d be ready to get up and fight the government after getting a plate to the head? As if.” He snorts into his mash potatoes. 

Steve, quietly grateful, shoots a wink towards the kid. He hopes Lucas knows that he’d do it all over again if it meant Billy Hargrove would never lay a hand on him. 

He decides to play off the embarrassment, make light of the whole situation. “Where‘s your sense of girl power, Wheeler? El here can take care of herself, no problem. The whole babysitter title is just a formality.”

“Formality?”

Because, yeah, to everyone’s evident shock, Steve knows big words. But El is still learning; not like she had English grammar classes in the lab.

“Yeah, it’s like…” He pauses, considering how to best phrase this definition, without things getting too complicated. “Like I’m only calling it babysitting because your old man over there worries that someone is going to take his precious, little angel away. When, in reality, I know that you’ll be the one saving my ass if the government comes knocking.”

“Nope.”

Hopper abruptly cuts across, mouth full of roast pork. Ms Byers kicks him for his bad manners, Steve is sure of it. 

“Harrington is watching you because I know he and Romeo over here have enough beef that he’s not about to let him sneak over and compromise your safety.” Mike huffs, sinking further into his seat with a face lit crimson. 

“ _Also_ , to make sure that you have a _balanced diet_ , and don’t live solely off Eggos. Because I just know you’ve been sneaking some from the ice box.” 

Gently, Hopper takes the pen from El’s grasp -- where she’d most likely been jotting down Steve’s butchered definition of the word ‘formality’ -- and makes a few notes of his own to help her out. Then: “Eat your broccoli. It’s got iron and stuff in it.”

“You eat your broccoli too?” And the table dissolves into the Party doing a poor job at concealing their laughter, Ms Byers’ teasing shrug, and a game of shoving broccoli onto each others’ plates to avoid having to consume it. 

Steve’s chest feels warm, for a moment. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, one that he can’t quite pick apart right now. But he wishes to settle into it, get comfortable, stay here for as long as he’s allowed. 

“I thought you said you wouldn’t go to Laurie’s party last night.”

Nancy rips him out of his solace, subtly. So only he can hear. Jonathan too, obviously, because he’s right there. And always has been. Steve was just too dumb and blind to see how close he and Nancy had been all along. 

“I didn’t make any promises, so.” He shoves a couple carrots into his mouth, eyes on his plate and the food he’s only managed to play with. He’s not all that hungry; there’s a pie waiting at home. “Why’s it matter, anyway?”

“Steve, you look like shi- ” Maybe Jonathan gives her a nudge, because Nancy halts that notion abruptly. 

“You don’t look _well_ , Steve. I mean, how much did you drink last night?” And as if it’s not enough that she’s prying into his personal life, Nancy makes a grab for the collar of his shirt, tugging it down to examine the mess that _Laurie, Tina, Mandy_ … left there. 

“Are those _hickeys_?” 

“ _Nance…_ ” Jonathan insists. Coining _Steve’s_ old nickname for her. Well, it’s not like he’d trademarked it or anything. 

This is the last thing he wants to get into right now. Like, as if it isn’t enough, her being here with Jonathan as a couple. Being at school, at the Snowball, _everywhere_. Holding hands and whispering softly and looking at Steve with pity every time he catches them in the act. 

Yeah, it hurts, but Steve doesn’t care. Nancy can love who makes her happy, can love whoever is best for her -- and obviously that was never him. It’s totally fine. He can deal with that much, alone, but not with all of this attention focused on what he gets up to. Like, what? He’s not allowed to _kiss_ other girls? 

But Nancy gets to run away to Illinois and kiss other boys. Gets to make him cry in front of Jonathan and that weird goth chic at Tina’s Halloween party because she told him, savage and without remorse, that she had been lying to him for a year. Gets to do all this while Steve thinks they’re still together. 

That? Now _that’s_ bullshit.

The messed up part is, you know, that he loves Jonathan. Despite their differences and Steve’s admitted torment of him in junior year. He loves Jonathan’s soft nature and his severe defense. Loves his crooked walk and his search for depth in every single surface level, throwaway sentence. Loves how his ability to read human emotion is so innate and connected that he can see how much Nancy is hurting Steve right now. He sees it and he’s trying to coax her into stopping. 

Steve can only love him for that. 

“Nance, it’s just a party, I mean. Steve knows what he’s doing, right?” _Soft, soft, soft._ Defensive of _him_. “He’s a responsible guy.”

He catches Steve’s eye, as if to ask _is this okay?_ Steve wants to say:

_Yes. Yes, it is._

_Hurting you the way I did is my biggest regret._

Instead, he just nods. A quiet thanks. 

Nancy doesn’t seem to catch on. And _oh_ , does he love how much she cares. So fiercely, so loyally to those who don’t even care all that much about her. But her evident guilt is soaking the edges of this intention. Steve can feel it leeching; feels it latching onto the hair at the nape of his neck, the hair that needs cutting, in a motion of possessive reassurance. In a need to assuage herself of whatever guilt won’t leave her alone when she looks at him. 

“I know you are, Steve, well it’s just, I… those are the kind of things that the _old_ Steve used to do. _King Steve_ .” She smiles fondly. He shudders, pinches the flesh of his thigh under the table. Still biting, even through denim. “And we _like_ this Steve -- we’d _miss_ him.” 

He pinches so hard that the tips of his nails bend uncomfortably against the dry denim, enough to make him shiver. 

Something like devastation cracks open in the space between his ribs, and it’s so warm where it sits. Even up until a few moments ago, Steve really had felt like something had been shifted in him. That the real Steve, the one on the inside, was finally being given a chance to shine through. That the Steve _now_ is special and kind and brave and worth knowing. 

But apparently, having a little fun diminishes that, to something shameful or gross. Like she’s his dad, cussing him out for bashing his head against the banister because he took some of the pills that he’d always hand to mom like candy. To shut her up. He should have been happy -- that they shut Steve up too. 

Just like Nancy should be happy. Because Steve’s having a good time without her. He’s _happy_ , even though she left him. He’s still the same, still good. Even took the kids to the arcade last Saturday, told them he had better things to do, just so they’d get that they were important. 

But she’s not. And even though he’s changed at his very core, Steve still isn’t good enough for her. Isn’t the person she wants -- even wants to be friends with at that. 

The fingers of his free hand grip the edge of the table, wood splintering in under his nail beds. And Steve could cry. But he doesn’t. He just turns to face Nancy head on, to confront what he’s been terrified of acknowledging for well over a month now. 

“Do you actually think that, like, beer and fucking and pills and parties are what I’m made up of, Nancy? Can you not see that I’ve _changed?_ ” The volume of his voice doesn’t match hers, but Steve isn’t yelling. The others are still chatting away amongst themselves, and why would they even care to notice?

“ _As if_ I’m still King Steve. You think I actually _got_ an invite to that party? They look at me like I’m dirt, Nancy.” Of course there’s something attractive about the unexpected fall of King Steve, of Hargrove’s rise to power. There’s mystery, him having enough of a reputation to function as a social pariah who’s still worthy of a good fuck. 

“Steve, I-- ”

Laurie obviously thought so -- tugged him into the upstairs bathroom for more than just kissing. Got mad at him for spilling hand soap all over the sink when he was reaching for purchase. Hissed at him, all warning and edge, _don’t tell Tina about this, okay? It’ll only upset her._ Which made Steve laugh, like, really hard later on. Had him spilling to Tina about what her best friend had said. Had Tina climbing him like a tree in Laurie’s heated pool, his jocks pinched tight and wet around his thighs. Cherry gloss sweet on his tongue.

He decides it best not tell Nancy this. Though he thinks about it. What she’d say, how she’d gasp and let her face scrunch up into something displeased and disgusted, how she’d scold him in front of all these kids like she’s his mother. 

But he doesn’t care, not really. Just like he didn’t care when Laurie and Tina sat back and laughed with Tommy H. and Carol and all the other guys on the basketball team while Billy Hargrove pinned him up against the kitchen cabinets and called him _pussy, princess, fairy._

Like he hadn’t just had his hand up Mandy Umansky’s pretty plaid skirt.

He could tell them all this, everyone at the table who has one ear turned and available, ready for him to go on and prove them all right by being _that asshole, Steve Harrington._ He could spill the proverbial beans and tell them what happened last night -- show them how the bruises on his neck are nothing in comparison to the purple indent of the countertop on his back. But why give them more reason to hate him, to want him _out_ of the little family they’ve created from alternate dimensions and labs who torture children?

Why give Nancy the satisfaction of knowing that he’s finding it pretty hard to cope -- to be this new, clean, generous Steve -- without her around?

So he stands, chair scraping along Ms Byers’ new floors while he gathers his dirty cutlery, and picks up his full plate and untouched glass of water, before leaning over to mutter, harsly and without grief:

“King Steve is _dead_.”

Someone allows a fork to clatter against the surface of the table in his periphery. 

“ _Steve_.”

And, on his way to the kitchen to deposit his dirty dishes, he can hear her rise to follow him; he can hear Jonathan, maybe, tugging her back down, telling her to _leave it_. He can hear the kids whisper and the Chief groan, but it’s only Ms Byers he sees when he turns away from dumping his food in the trash and rinsing his plate at the sink. 

Shame crawls its way up his throat, bites at the tip of his tongue, when she smiles at him all soft like her eldest son and _tired_. 

Steve hates to think that he’s contributing to that. 

“Was dinner okay, sweetie?”

He nods, forgetting his words for a moment. They’re caught in his throat, trying to stay down and leave him stuck in this awful moment of feeling bad inside and not being able to tell anyone why. 

“I-- It was lovely, Ms Byers. _Really_ great. Thank you. Just, well, my mom’s home and she made a pie and she’ll be really upset if I’m too full to eat it.”

“Call me Joyce, honey, _please_. You make me feel ancient when you talk like that.”

His chin dips to his chest, a hesitant smile surfacing to match her own. And Steve tries to loosen up, match her relaxed stance against the edge of the kitchen table. Tries to shake out the stiffness of his arms and the tightness in his chest -- how it aches as much as it did in the month prior when he breathes too deeply. 

He nods in attempts to be soft like her, like Jonathan, like Will could be again in the next few months; when the sun comes out and he can feel it heat his skin once more. 

“C’mon out back with me for a sec, will you?” She makes for the back door, wrapped in nothing but a flimsy flannel, and Steve has no choice but to follow. 

He closes the door gently, looking down to find her sitting on the second to bottom step, sneakers twisting in the frozen dirt. And carefully, though there’s not much room, he sits next to her, waits for a break in the silence, waits for the reason she’s out here in the cold with him and not in the house, enjoying a warm dinner with her _family._

“You know,” She pauses, lights up with some brand of cigarette that Steve isn’t familiar with, leaves him hanging for a moment. “I don’t know what I would have done without you that night. God, I… I don’t even want to imagine it.”

She inhales, a longer drag than Steve himself would have taken. He doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, because all he did _that night_ was let Billy Hargrove cream him against her living room floor. 

Without asking, she passes him a cigarette too. Lights it for him and all, has him lean in real close and winks conspiratorially like this is theirs now. Hopper on the front porch, Joyce on the back steps. Two entirely different worlds. In both, they treat him like a friend, not a child. 

“Those kids, they think they’re so tough. And they are, no doubt, but they don’t have to be. Right, Steve?”

“Right.”

When he nods, the jolt of it sends a pile of ash down onto the crisp denim of his jeans. He thinks it should sizzle, because his legs feel wet in the cold. 

“I heard your mom is home.”

“Hop tell you that?”

“Hop is more of a gossip than he likes to let on. But we like to be in the know about these things too.”

The slight of her shoulder nudges against his bicep, and Steve feels like maybe he should offer her something to warm up. But his jacket’s in his car, and an arm around her doesn’t feel like something he should do. 

“D’you know her? My mom.”

Ms Byers shakes her head, bangs catching on her eyelashes. Maybe she needs a haircut too. 

“I’ve seen her on TV a couple times, though. You look like her.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Steve should feel grateful for that. For his dust bowl eyes and the sallow tint of his skin that freckles him all over in the summer. For straight and pearly whites, for the upward curl of his smile. He’s willowy, like her, had to work hard to build up the muscle he has now. And sure, the ashy fairness of her hair does not match the deep tones of his own, but when Steve and his mother stand side by side they look like a sepia photograph. 

“Do you like it?”

“Like what?”

“When she makes you pie?”

He’d like to tell Ms Byers that his mother’s not some silver screen queen, that there’s no strength in her beauty, no love. He’d like to tell her that his mother is blue. Dark blue like the saddest songs and the brightest nights -- the ones that blind your eyes into a constant state of _open_ , that make you see everything, even the shadows.

But all he does is take another drag and let the smoke sit in the depths of him before he releases his grand exhale. She looks at him, as if waiting. As if she really does care about his answer. 

“Cherry’s a little hard to wash out.” Of the floors, the walls, the cabinets, and the designer dress she had tailored to cinch perfectly at the waist. 

Ms Byers hums at that, squashes the butt of her cigarette against the side of her house like it’s no big deal, and tightens the knot of his laces.

He hadn’t even noticed they’d come undone. 

“Remember what I said about the kids being tough.”

He nods, struck speechless by her thoughtless affection. 

“You’re pretty tough too. You take all these hard hits and then you stand back up and take another and another.”

“Ms By-- Joyce, I…”

Her small hands, stiff with the cold, squeeze at his foot before she rises; barely taller than him even though he’s still sitting down. And he doesn’t think he can quite manage standing up. 

“You know you don’t have to do that, right?”

And he could do it -- he could burst into tears right now, head pressed to the soft flannel covering her stomach, and shake until all the tears are squeezed from his eyes and he’s left bone dry. 

He could tell her about how he hasn’t seen his dad for almost eight months now. How, in some dreams, hoards of demodogs crawl out of his pool and gut his mother like a fish on the living room carpet. How in some dreams it is entirely of her own doing. 

He could tell her about Nancy and how he feels like loving her was maybe the only thing he was really good at, and he still couldn’t manage to do that right. Or about how every time he thinks about the words he spoke to Jonathan in the alley behind the movie theatre, he wishes the hoards of demodogs would come and gut him instead. Or that, at least, he was strong enough to do it with his own two hands. 

He could tell her about the party last night and how much he drank, the pills he took before leaving, the pills he took during and after. How he doesn’t really remember now if it was Laurie or Amy he fucked in the bathroom. Or if he even wanted Tina to wrap around him like an underwater python and bite his neck so hard that it felt hot like blood. Did he even put his hand up Mandy Umansky’s skirt, or did she put it there herself?

And he could tell her that he really doesn’t care about these things. That Nancy always wanted him to, was always so _careful_ about sex, and maybe Jonathan is like that too and they’re a perfect match -- one made in heaven! But Steve rarely had to think twice about it. 

Sex is easy, something he’s good at. He gets praised for it, or at least he used to, but everyone _knows_ what he’s like in the sack. That’s why _Laurie/Amy, Tina, Mandy…_ tried it on with him in the first place. 

And he could ask Ms Byers: _does that make me a bad person?_

_Does changing my title from King Steve to damn good babysitter do anything to get rid of all the ugly underneath?_

He isn’t given the chance to ask, because she offers him a hand, warm and calloused, but the most welcoming invite he’s ever received. When she pulls him up, with more strength than a woman that size would normally possess, Ms Byers catches him in a hug. 

It’s awkward, because he’s never really hugged like this before, not with a woman. Not out of platonic affection. She can barely reach his shoulders and Steve doesn’t know where to put his hands, but it’s okay. Because she’s rubbing soft circles on his back, like she knows where Billy Hargrove hurt him again, like he never even has to tell. 

He misses the warmth when she lets go, and he can tell she misses it too for how she shivers on the stoop. 

His ice cold hands find the denim depths of his pockets, but the warmth just doesn’t compare. Ms Byers makes to open the back door and head inside, but pauses, allowing her right ear to catch the sounds drifting from the dining room. 

“You know, I think everyone’s pretty much finished up in there. I’d love for you to stay, but if you need to get back soon,” (Read: if you don’t have it in you to get into it with Nancy again. “We can drop Dustin home. No one is gonna see you sneak around the side.”

“No, well, I mean yes. Maybe. But tell Dustin I’ll pick him up at eight, okay? Max and Lucas too, if they want a ride.”

Ms Byers-- Joyce, he reminds himself -- smiles at that. Steve smiles back, feeling that it’s a little more real this time, if the softened lines of her face are anything to go by. 

“I’ll cover for you. But don’t be a stranger, okay? You’re a pretty big deal around here.”

Steve laughs, because he wants to believe her. That, sure, he could die a tragic death in his own home and it’s doubtful that anyone would find him for weeks, maybe months. But if anything happened to him _here_ \-- like it did a month ago, with Billy Hargrove and _plant your feet_ and a scar that runs jagged like lightning down his hairline -- at least someone would notice. Like Joyce or Hop, maybe Jonathan too. And the kids? They’d really care, he figures. They’d be pretty torn up about it. 

“See you at eight, Joyce.” 

“Bye, honey.”

When the door shuts softly behind her, he takes a moment in the crisp Winter air. Somewhere, in his chest maybe, or behind his eyes, he can feel something loosen. Something he didn’t even know was trapped in the first place. 

He roots around for his keys as he skirts around the house, grateful he didn’t think to leave them down inside, and dips under the windows so the kids can’t see him. 

When he starts the Beemer and turns the heat on full blast, it’s a quiet affair. He leaves the dirt drive as if never there, the warmth that he now feels coming from _inside_ , not the blocked up vents of his car. 

His eyes water as he speeds down what the kids call _Mirkwood_ , but Steve hears himself laugh in spite of it all. Feels the choke of it cut up his throat and bound free from the hollow of his tongue as if finally released. 

Because nothing is better, really. Nothing has changed so drastically that Steve might find it easier to look at himself in the mirror, to smile at himself as he does it. But he feels lighter, in a way. Like there is hope. 

Like things don’t have to be so dark blue anymore.

…

When he slips seamlessly into the smooth concrete drive of his house, Steve’s feet carry him towards the double doors without the weighty feeling of dread holding his appendages down. 

He thinks of cherry pie and talking to his mother, of treasuring these brief moments they have together before she heads off again. Maybe over a movie, or an old record she’d collected in Europe. 

He hopes for cherry pie and finds it. On the kitchen floor. Spilling from his mother’s left wrist. Sallow, like his own. A picture too vivid to exist solely in sepia. 

"Oh, _sugar_ , you came home."

  
  


… 

  
  


When Steve is happy, he thinks it’s going to last forever. 

But it doesn’t. It never does. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> whew! this one really took something out of me. like a whole chunk of my being. i've been working on it for quite a while now, and the bones of it were there, but i never really intended for it to be something dark. i don't know. lots of things inspired this, some of the most striking lines came from me watching too much euphoria, reading the raven boys for the ??? time, and the very last scene in mid90s (which absolutely shattered me tbh). 
> 
> this slots into place before my other steve fic, so technically it's part one of the series. i hope you enjoyed it! there are reference to that fic in this one and vice versa, so give it a read if you like but no pressure. 
> 
> title is from a Very Steve Song: "pink rabbits" by the national.


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